Kingdom Come, Chapter 8
Kingdom Come, Chapter 8 Everything went black and I opened my eyes. I was laying in what felt like a cool substance, like cool water at a pool. I saw the top of the room I had been in earlier, and I rubbed my head and sat up, dizzy. I saw Lindsey standing there, but noticed something off about her- her expression. Her mouth was slightly open and in the shape of an ‘O’, her eyes completely widened, she was sweating, her entire body frozen. I turned around and saw Po looking at me. His expression almost matched Lindsey’s. I wondered what the problem was, and why they looked so shocked. I looked down at myself, then screamed. The cool wet substance I was laying in was pure lava. How was I not burning to death? It didn’t even feel hot! It felt cool, like thick water. I moved my hand across the surface, but it just felt like thick, cool water. I stuck my hand in it. Same feeling. My eyes widened and I gasped. There were either two reasons this was happening: either, one, Ai had made Lindsey’s powers not have any affect on me with her singing, or two, I was a fire witch and I didn’t know it. I figured it was the first one. I mean, come on- how could I possibly be a fire witch? I slowly stood up, shaking, barely able to stand up straight. Lindsey’s expression only grew more shocked. “How did you…? Are you a…?” She shook her head. “There’s no way!” she exclaimed, her face slowly turning back to normal. “Even if you are, I will not lose to you! There is no way that you’re a fire witch!” Lindsey came charging at me, and just as she was about to give me a powerful kick, I threw myself on the ground to avoid it. She jumped over me and threw herself on the ground on top of me, but I rolled out of the way and she fell on her back in the lava. “Give it up, Lindsey!” I exclaimed as we punched, blocked, and kicked. I jumped and dodged one of her hits. “Your powers don’t affect me anymore! Make it easier on yourself and stop fighting! Give in, now!” “NEVER!” Lindsey screamed. “Tai Lung gave his life to fulfill his destiny of being the Dragon Warrior, and now I must end the journey he began!” She kicked me and I was sent flying into the wall next to Po. “Kelsi!” Po exclaimed. I turned to him. “Use your power!” “What power?” I asked quickly. “If you’re a fire witch, you must have the power to control fire like Lindsey!” he exclaimed. I considered this for a moment, but by then Lindsey had already whacked me in the head again. I felt dizzy from that hit, but I kept fighting her. I thought about what Po had said while I fought Lindsey. Maybe I could try and use my powers. I jumped away from Lindsey and focused very hard on the lava. I put my hand above a patch of the burning liquid and slowly but steadily moved it upwards. It took a few seconds, but a small bit of the lava began rising up into the air with my hand. Soon I was controlling a ball of lava. I pushed my hand out at Lindsey and the ball of lava did the same, as if my hand and the lava were playing a game of Simon Says. The ball of lava flew right at Lindsey and hit her in the face. She screamed in pain and clutched her face with both her hands. I gasped. Could it be that Lindsey was losing her powers before me? I decided to find out. I did the same thing with another ball of lava and it hit her leg. She screamed even louder. Soon, I was firing balls of lava at her from all directions, many at a time. I felt like I was the queen of lava, like my hands and the lava were playing an intense game of Simon Says. Nothing was stopping me. After a few more balls of lava Lindsey was on the floor, screaming in pain. I decided that I should give her a chance to forfeit and I walked up to her. Lindsey’s screaming died down and she looked up at me, on the ground, looking incredibly defeated. “Lindsey, I’ll give you one more chance,” I said. “Tai Lung would want you to stay alive. At least give in, and we’ll spare your life and put you in Chor Gom prison, the prison named after your parents. They would want you to stay alive as well.” Lindsey spat at my feet. “Never!” she cried in a weak voice. “Tai Lung wanted me to kill the panda, and that is what I will do, and I will stop at nothing to defeat him-!” The ceiling broke over Lindsey and many blurs of color came falling down on her, trapping her. I waved the dust out of my face and coughed before getting a look at what was trapping her. I sighed in relief. The furious five was pinning her to the ground and had knocked her out with the fall. “Guys!” I exclaimed, kneeling down to face them. “Oh my gosh! Thank goodness you’re here!” “Hey, we wouldn’t not have come, kid,” Monkey said, looking at me, smiling, pinning Lindsey down. “Besides, Shifu needed to punish you for running away like that. You know he wouldn’t be able to stand one of his daughters doing something dangerous like that.” “Daughters?” I asked, confused about what he meant. Before I could figure out why he was saying this to me, I heard footsteps behind me. Shifu, Trinity, and Nicole were running down the staircase and noticed me. “Kelsi!” Trinity and Nicole yelled, almost in tears because of their joy to find out that I was alive and hadn’t been killed by Lindsey. They ran to me and we had a huge group hug. “Thank Ai you’re okay!” Trinity said, smiling, hugging me tightly. “How’d it go? What happened? Oh, Kelsi, I can’t believe you’re alright!” Nicole exclaimed. She squeezed Trinity and I very tightly, and it started hurting me. “Um… Nicole? Can’t breathe,” I said in an airy voice. She let go of us and we took deep breaths of air. “Human!” I heard Shifu say. We all turned around to face him, and he had the most angry expression on his face. It wasn’t even funny. He walked up to me and smacked me on the leg with Oogway’s staff. I yelped in pain and clutched it. “How dare you do something like that! Running away on the most dangerous mission one could think of!? You could have died! You and Po could have both been killed by Lindsey!” “But we weren’t, Master Shifu!” I protested. “Do not talk back to me like that, human!” he yelled. “I am very disappointed and incredibly angry at you, you know that!? You will never run off like that ever again, do you hear me!?” I nodded slowly. “Yes, Master,” I said, looking at the ground. From Shifu’s point of view, I looked ashamed of myself. But from my point of view, I was incredibly proud on the inside. “Um, guys? A little help here?” a voice asked. We all turned to face Po, who was still covered in chains. We all ran to him (with the exception of Monkey and Crane, who kept an unconscious Lindsey pinned to the ground) and easily pulled the heavy chains off of the Dragon Warrior. He slowly got up. “Th-thanks,” he said. “Guys, we have to tell you what happened, you should have seen it! Kelsi was going all Kung Fu on Lindsey, going all, ‘Watchow! Huh! Bam!’, kicking Lindsey with her awesome skills, and blocking her moves and all that, it was so awesome!” It made me feel good that Po, the Dragon Warrior, was excited about my Kung Fu and thought I fought awesomely. And it made me feel really good to know that I had defeated someone as powerful as Lindsey by using her own powers against her. Her powers… I realized that I had to tell everyone else what had happened earlier. ---- “Um, actually, guys, there’s something I have to tell you that went on in the battle,” I said a few hours after we had left the volcano. The sun was setting and we would probably be traveling back in the dark. Po had Lindsey, who was still unconscious and probably would be for another few hours, over his shoulder. Everyone looked at me. I rubbed the back of my neck. “Um, at one point, she shot a huge ray of lava at me, and of course, since no normal being can survive being hit with lava that strong, I, well, died… but I didn’t die.” I told them about my dream, Ai’s song, how I could then control fire, how I used it against Lindsey, and how that was when they came. The story left their eyes widened and their jaws on the ground. “That’s impossible!” Master Shifu exclaimed. “Have you ever been around fire before? Have you been burned in the past?” “Yeah, many times, Master,” I replied. Master Shifu’s eyes bulged. “Did Ai give you this power?” Po asked. “Did her singing, like, put some power into your body or something?” “Maybe,” I said, rubbing my head. “Look, I’m really confused right now. Does this mean I’ve been a fire witch all along and I haven’t realized it? Like I hadn’t channeled my power until my battle with Lindsey. And if I’m a fire witch, that means that someone in my family is a fire witch. And if I’m a fire witch, that means that… Trinity and Nicole, you guys are-” “-a grass witch and a water witch,” Trinity finished for me. “So does this mean that I’m a grass witch and I didn’t even know it and Nicole’s really a water witch? Does this mean that?-” “Humans, stop asking questions, I don’t know!” Master Shifu exclaimed. “We’ll figure this out when we do research when we get to the Jade Palace!” ---- We shut up about the element witch talk and started talking about other things as we ran through villages, over rooftops, and over mountains. I checked my watch after what seemed like miles and miles of walking and what seemed like many hours after the sun had gone down and found out that it was around one in the morning. We crossed over a mountain and I saw familiar shops, villages, streets, carts, and a very tall mountain with a red and green palace. I smiled when I saw the valley home to the place where I train- the valley of peace. I had really thought that I would never be able to see this place again, like I would be killed by Lindsey. Seeing the valley, my second home, brought a smile to my face. We ran down the mountain, Nicole barely able to stay awake, Po panting and gasping and barely able to stay on his feet without collapsing, and ran through the valley, up the Thousand Steps to the palace grounds, and into the comfort of the Jade Palace. Master Shifu turned to us. “You all, bed,” he ordered. We silently bowed to him and ran off to our bedrooms. “Oh, and Kelsi,” I heard him say. I turned around to face him. He smiled at me. “You did very well, human.” He said, smiling. I nodded. “Thank you, Master,” I said, bowing to him. Then I turned around and sped off to my room… ---- The next morning, as soon as I woke up (which was earlier than anyone else), I got dressed into a red tank top and navy blue jean shorts (I went barefoot, which is what I usually did with my feet around the Jade Palace, except for wearing slippers and sandals), and silently crept out of my room, down the hall, and into the scroll room. I searched through the scrolls. The shelves were labeled with what letter their titles started with, so I went through each label slowly, looking for something that said ‘E’. Since I had turned those letters to English with my necklace many times before, I had memorized what they meant and could read them, which means I had memorized letters A-Z in the Chinese language. I came to the one that said ‘E’, and spent a good twenty minutes looking through each scroll to find one that read ‘Element Witches’. Soon, I found a scroll that said on the top, ‘Element Witches and their Abilities’. I grabbed it, sat down in a chair, pressed my jewel to the scroll to make the letters turn to English, and I started looking through the scroll. Most of this stuff I already knew from Lindsey (who had been shipped off by rhino guards to Chor Gom prison, the prison named after her parents), and I skipped around until I found a section that really caught my eye: …By just simply being around an element witch, a being who has element blood would be able to channel their powers completely. This is why many beings have been able to first use their powers when they’re with someone else who is an element witch… I stopped there, my mouth gaping. I grabbed the scroll and ran down the hall, stopping at the dining room where everyone but I was gathered. Even Shifu was there, talking to his students. “Guys!” I exclaimed, out of breath. “Guys, you have to read this!” “Woah, woah, kid, slow down,” Mantis said. “Take a deep breath, keep quiet for a second or two, and then tell us.” “This is way too important to wait, Mantis,” I explained a little softer than I had been talking earlier. I turned to my two best friends. “Do you all remember how I was able to channel element powers when I was around Lindsey?” I asked. They all nodded. I turned to the group as a whole. “Well, I found this scroll, and read what it says here!” I put my jewel up to the scroll and put it down in front of Trinity and Nicole. Nicole read the section I had read out loud to everyone. When she was done, everyone’s jaws dropped. “I think this is how I got my fire element powers,” I said. “Yeah, it makes sense now!” Nicole said, her eyes twinkling a little. “The Dragon Sisters have had element powers which passes on from generation to generation-” “And being with Lindsey helped Kelsi channel those powers-” Trinity continued. “And all Trinity and Nicole have to do to channel theirs is to spend time with me!” I ended. “Well, if that’s true, then first we have to see if Kelsi still has hers,” Tigress said. “We have to figure out if she’s really an element witch or if the power was just given to her by Ai temporarily.” I nodded. I turned around to the stove, where Po was cooking a special kind of dumplings which were for breakfast. “Um, Po, the dumplings don’t look like they’re getting enough heat,” I said truthfully. I looked at the flame underneath the pan, focusing on it very hard, and then made my hand rise a bit higher. The flame rose as much as my hand did, and got bigger. Po turned to everyone else, eyes bulging. “It works,” he announced. I looked to my friends. “Well, we were with Kelsi all night last night, so we could have our powers now,” Trinity said. We nodded. “Well, let’s try!” Nicole said. She ran down the hall and out the door, near the bathing pool, and we all followed her. ---- Nicole was looking over the water in the pool, breathing deeply, focusing on it. “The key is to focus on it very hard,” I explained. “Think about nothing else in the world except for the water.” She nodded slowly. Then, Nicole raised her hand into the air and kept her fingers pointing down at the water. A spot in the water rose only a little, then fell back down. She tried it again, and this time the water went higher. Then she moved her hand all around and the water went with it. She used her other hand to make a slicing movement over the bottom of the water, and she was left with a large ball of water. She put her hand down and the water fell back into the pool. We all applauded her. “Okay, my turn,” Trinity said. She ran over to the peach tree of Heavenly Wisdom and we all followed her. Trinity closed her eyes, spread out her arms, and I knew that she was trying to concentrate on nothing but the nature around her and plants, flowers, leaves, all nature. She opened her eyes, looked down at a flower that looked like it had just sprouted, and raised her hand up. The flower grew taller and bloomed. She leaned down, pulled it from the ground, and waved her hand over it. The petals became a shade of bright red. She waved her hand over it again. This time they turned yellow. She waved her hand over the petals a third time and they turned a shade of bright orange. She turned to face us and we clapped. She leaned over and presented the flower to Viper, who smiled and thanked Trinity for something so beautiful. “Okay,” I said. “It’s official.” Everyone turned to look at me. I nodded. “We’re Element Witches.” Their looks told me that they believed it, and it was certainly true. We had had this power, and had now officially unlocked it… ---- “Kelsi!” I turned around, and before I could even identify the voice of the person calling my name, I felt a strong thing knocking into me and I was being hugged. I looked down and identified the black hair and chubby arms wrapping around my skinny waist. “Andrew,” I whispered. I then looked up and saw Trinity and Nicole about twenty feet away from us, looking at me and smiling. I was sure that they weren’t too far away, so they could probably hear us. Their looks said, “Hug him back! This is probably the only opportunity you’ll get to hug him!” I wrapped my arms around his body and hugged him back. When we let go, his dark brown eyes looked into my blue-green ones. He looked down at the floor of the school lobby for a moment, then looked back up at me. “I’m so sorry, Kelsi,” he said. “I didn’t think about what I was saying, I didn’t know you’d react like that.” I sighed. “I forgive you, Andrew,” I said. “I just… got a little scared when you told Pete that you were going to kill him. I didn’t think you would ever say that to anyone.” I smiled more. “But, I forgive you. Just don’t scare me like that ever again.” “Hey, no promises,” he said, smiling. I rolled my eyes, knowing that he was joking. “Kelsi… I have a question.” “Yeah, Andrew?” “Well, um,” he looked up at me. “Do you still love me?” I looked up at Trinity and Nicole. They looked incredibly confused. I sighed. They would find out sooner or later. I was surprised word of it hadn’t gotten to them, news of it was all over sixth grade last year. I looked down at Andrew, ready to tell him the truth, and ready to tell Trinity and Nicole the secret I had been hiding from them. “Yes, I do,” I said. “But I’m still mad at you for hurting me!” Trinity and Nicole gasped, they looked incredibly shocked. I sighed and continued on. “It’s hard to believe that you don’t love me anymore,” I said to Andrew. “You were way too overprotective of me, Kelsi, I thought you were holding me back from being with my friends and doing the things I wanted,” Andrew replied. “I had to. I didn’t think I was getting anywhere with you.” I nodded. “I understand,” I said softly. I looked up, angry eyes, furious face, which made him step back a little. “Thanks for breaking my heart!” I yelled, and ran to Trinity and Nicole. Their jaws were on the floor, and their eyes were bulging out of their sockets. “What the heck just went on!?” Nicole yelled. “Is Andrew really your ex-boyfriend, and you didn’t tell us?!” I nodded and looked up. “Yes.” To Be Continued…